Max Payne 2 Review

Welcome to Noir York.

In fact, there are no rockets or grenade launchers at all in Max Payne 2. However, the enemy AI is handier with grenades and Molotov cocktails this time around. But they're not completely competent and will sometimes blow themselves up with a bad throw, or they won't run away when you throw one at them from a sufficient distance. For the most part, you will be dealing with quantity over quality, and they will be no match for your Bullet Time. They are still whip-fast, though, so you won't be able to go in guns blazing and expect to come out without a scratch. Thankfully, they will randomly drop painkillers, unlike the first game. You'll never be without some of those for too long--but you won't be walking around smugly with a full load of them for too long either. Damn that AK-47!

Another problem I feel duty-bound to point out were some significant sound issues. This game was tested on two different computers with three speaker setups: stereo speakers with subwoofer, a 2.1 setup, and a 5.1 setup. Both of the setups with a center channel had random drops in volume for dialogue and some sound effects. A person talking right in front of you would be almost impossible to hear. All of Max's in-game comments come through this channel, and during the middle of the game, Max and Mona will be using headsets through this center channel as well. If you can't hear what one of them is saying, you'll have some frustrating guesswork ahead of you, and this mid-game segment is very time-limited. I used one system with a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and another with an Audigy 2, and occasionally experienced some harsh, repetitive clicking that could only be cured by restarting the game. Remedy recommends lowering audio hardware acceleration in Windows if you have problems, and you can also disable multi-channel audio and go with standard stereo. Your subwoofer should still kick in with this mode, but the environmental sound won't be nearly as cool.

This wouldn't be so bad if the game, then loading the saved game, didn't take so long. It seemed to be related to Bullet Time, which dynamically lowers all sound effects to a low pitch, then raises them up again when you go back to normal mode. However, since the rest of the game is of such high quality, I'm giving the developer the benefit of the doubt, and hopefully a patch will come out to address this. The game also crashed to the desktop a couple of times when loading the game, but was otherwise stable and lockup-free.

Other than that, the sound was great, especially with surround sound. You get environmental noise like televisions and conversations panning around as you rotate, and there's also the drone of steady rain on the rooftop (the game takes place during autumn), and footsteps that sound different according to the floor surface. Every weapon sounded slightly different. The Desert Eagle packs a lot more punch than the 9mm, the shotgun has an appropriate boom, the AK-47 has a dry, mechanical stutter, and grenades clink and clatter to a stop before they explode. It would be nice if grenades didn't always make fiery explosions (since standards ones almost never do in real life) but hey, you're playing this game for the explosions, right? Believe me, there are plenty to go around.

Max Payne 2 also takes advantage of a lot of high-end features, like triple buffering (which smooths out framerate to avoid the slideshow effect when your rig can't keep up), radiosity lighting, cubic environment mapping, and tone remapping (a color effect that, in this game, increases contrast during Bullet Time). If any of these sound like Greek to you, each one has an informative tool tip in the Options menu. Unfortunately none of these features can be adjusted while the game is running--not even the resolution--so start conservatively. The game has uniformly excellent textures throughout, and detailed character models. Max's jacket looks like leather and swings back and forth as he runs, and Mona's blue jeans are pretty easy on the eyes as well. Voice synchronization isn't as advanced though, with only a few basic expressions for different sounds. But almost all of the dialogue comes through the comic book vignettes, so it doesn't stand out much. The voice acting, though, is truly excellent stuff. Not only did I not cringe, but I genuinely enjoyed all of that aspect of the game.

Although Max Payne 2 is a short game by any standard, it is thick with drama and action. And once you've played through the first time, you'll have higher difficulty levels, including all the modes from the previous installment. You'll also have Dead Man Walking, where enemies endlessly spawn while you try to stay alive as long as possible. There's also no multiplayer to speak of, but we suspect you'll see some life-extending mods once the tools are released.

The Verdict

If you didn't like the first one, there's probably nothing new or different enough to pull you in this time. The love story adds some dramatic depth to Max's haunting story, and somehow makes what's going on more important and interesting. Wreaking havoc is nice, but it's great to also have a love interest complicating things, and Mona Sax is definitely up to the task. The visuals are excellent, the voice work is superior to what we usually get dealt in the action genre, and I only wish the game was a bit longer. A lot longer actually, but it's more because this kind of game is such a rare find than because that find is relatively meager.